I was a 'school tutor' for my classmates back in secondary school and JC, helping peers move from a C6 to A2 for O level maths. I've also taught 2 students (sec 3 and pri 6) during my summer break in
Upper secondary level - A Maths E Maths Physics/Chem Python Programming
Junior college level - Maths
Commitment / Other Details
I prefer to provide topical revisions at a time as opposed to revision of the entire syllabus in one lesson as I believe students have to develop a strong foundation to consistently score.
Rapport Building
Rapport comes with trust from both parties, its only when parents and tutors start to see improvements in the student's work can the tutor prove that he/she is reliable to provide necessary aid. Tutors should understand the student's main concerns with their work and address those obstacles directly.
Keeping Up with Curriculum
After ORD-ing from NS I started revising on my A Level topics slowly everyday to regain my academic footing in preparation for part time tutoring, as well as University next year. Roughly 2-4 hours a day is spent on my expertise back in JC (Maths/Science, which I will be mainly teaching). Sure it is definitely daunting to relearn an entire 2 years worth of syallabi, maybe even impossible. One of my workaround is to read up on specific chapters depending on the student's agenda for every lesson so I can target those topics prior to the lesson to better prepare myself. In addition I will be using my personalised notes and sharing it with the student as I inputted tips and strategies not mentioned during my tenure in JC.
As a Good Tutor
Some basic qualities include understanding of your student's issue, patience, and prioritisation of subjects/topics. A tutor should be able to identify the root cause of the student's problem and directly address it, as mentioned earlier. He/She has to guide the student back to their fundamentals if necessary to polish up on their basic skills (simple differentiation, algebra, etc) before being able to tackle higher order thinking topics (Applications of differentiation, vectors in 3d, etc) and from there on continue to refine the student's knowledge and competencies. With understanding the student also comes patience, and its a quintessential trait of a tutor simply because some students have a slower learning pace that which any tutor cannot predict prior to their first lesson. A good tutor has to adapt on the ground and proceed at a slow pace during the first few lessons to better understand the student's learning curve and help him/her journey through their problems and resolve it together. If it happens that the student still lack the ability to comprehend a concept, the tutor should maintain his/her composure and find ways to help the student better grasp the concept. Lastly on the topic of prioritisation, not all students would be able to equally excel in chapters for a subject at the end of the day. Some students would have a multitude of topics in which they lack knowledge of, and certain topics are bound to be more frequent in examinations. A good tutor should be able to identify which are the commonplace topics and ensure that his/her student is competent at, so as to maximise the student's score/grade in their future exams. In a last-minute scenario, the tutor should help work on the student's weakest topic before others to better elevate the student's score as much as possible.
